


as real as anything

by reogulus



Category: Succession (TV 2018)
Genre: Abuse of Power, Animal Death, Class Differences, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Episode s01e07: Austerlitz, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:53:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24200050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/pseuds/reogulus
Summary: “Heard you killed my brother’s dog,” the stranger strolled over to their pool table, after downing a glass of what looked like vodka at the bar.
Relationships: Kendall Roy/Tanner
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	as real as anything

“Heard you killed my brother’s dog,” the stranger strolled over to their pool table, after downing a glass of what looked like vodka at the bar.

“What’s it to you?” Tanner asked, wary, didn’t bother pretending like he wasn’t staring through narrowed eyes with thick suspicion. He turned towards the man slightly with the pool cue in hand, twirled it at him like some sort of weapon of defense.

“I just wanted to give my thanks,” the man smiled wide. “You relieved him of what wasn’t meant for him to bear.”

Tanner gave Chang and Mac a look. Another Roy had approached him out of the blue, saying something recognizable to him as words in the English language but didn’t make sense, the way they were strung together one after another. Perhaps this one also came bearing a chance for him to make $3000 in one day—the lightning might well strike twice at Molly’s, the only watering hole in this town. But Tanner didn’t believe in coincidences.

He drained the rest of the beer, set the empty glass down on the edge of the pool table. “Tanner,” the hand he offered along with his name was still cold and damp with condensation from the glass. The man’s palm felt too soft and too warm against his skin as he pulled him into a firm grip.

“Kendall,” the man with the strong corporate handshake said. Tanner had never known a man named Kendall in his life.

“Right, Kendall Roy,” and the name didn’t quite feel right in Tanner’s mouth without the family name attached, the first time he said it. “Taking a detour before showing up at your brother’s?”

Kendall laughed and nodded, “uh-huh.” There was a pinkish flush to his cheeks; Tanner couldn’t be sure if it was the reflection of the red glow from the Budweiser sign hanging over their heads, or if Kendall was feverish somehow. Tanner watched him lean forward to reach around the pool table, introduce himself and shake hands with Chang and Mac. Mac said something that made all of them laugh, and they laughed together. Kendall waved at Janelle to get them another round of beers, some kind of premium brand they’d never ordered for themselves.

Tanner doesn’t remember everything that happened at the bar after that. Kendall might have joined them for a game or two, or maybe Chang asked him and he declined. By the looks of Kendall, Tanner just didn’t pin him as a billiards kind of guy. He really liked the beer, though; they all did, but Kendall _really_ liked it, poured himself one glass after another until half of the first pitcher was gone, Adam’s apple bobbing up and down that long, skinny neck as he took those long gulps. Like he’d been dried out in the desert some forty days and nights.

“Hey, easy,” Tanner should have minded his own business, but he didn’t. Something about the way Kendall stood next to him with his shoulders hunched made it feel almost natural to reach out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Your brother’s fridge is probably more expensive than this whole fuckin’ bar added together, gotta save some room.”

Kendall furrowed his brows and looked to him like he said something nonsensical. “No fucking way, dude, this is my first time drinking beer since, I don’t know, three years and two months ago? I’m not gonna ruin that with drinks bought with my dad’s pity money.”

Tanner nodded like it made sense to him, which it still didn’t, but something about the way Kendall said those words made Tanner decide he likes Kendall better than his brother. So he picked up another pitcher, topped up his own glass and Kendall’s. Their glasses clinked against each other, and he went bottoms up like Kendall did, for the sake of some solidarity. When Kendall smiled and Tanner smiled back, it just didn’t feel all that complicated.

Tanner remembers less of the day he met Connor Roy than he does the day he met Kendall. It was fucking weird, seeing a grown ass man with salt-and-pepper hair and a shaggy beard on the verge of tears, taking a dog around the bar in his pajama trousers. The dog could barely walk, was whimpering the whole time. The rowdy noises and loud music probably did it no favors either.

He was sitting alone on a bar stool that night, Chang and Mac were out of town for a job. Tanner only had one beer or maybe two before the man walked towards him and started talking, the night still youngish and slow. Janelle had eavesdropped on the whole thing from behind the bar, but she told him later that she’d wished it didn’t happen on her shift. And, yeah, no shit; anything involving a cancerous dog is bound to kill the vibe.

Tanner waited for Connor to slur through the words, what he couldn’t let the vet do earlier in the day, how he wants a good life for the dog. The state he was in, the bar probably wouldn’t have sold him any drinks if he wanted to order anything, but he’d already left a big fat tip on the bar. It was difficult to look a man like that in the eye, so Tanner trained his eyes on the stack of bills as Connor kept talking.

“I’ll pay you, man, I just can’t watch,” it felt like an eternity had passed when Connor arrived at the end of his tale. Seeing his eyes were shiny with tears and his upper lip crusted with dried snot, Tanner was compelled to say yes if only to put an end to the second-hand embarrassment. He thought about his words as carefully as he could, said he would consider taking the dog for the right price. He’d never seen a man so relieved to hear that the only issue would be money.

Once a number was figured out, Connor left the dog leashed behind the bar with Janelle, went out to an ATM around the corner. Tanner was half-expecting him to just drive off and never come back, and that would have been a shitty ending to a shitty story, but it would have been one that made sense. But no, the world’s saddest man was good on his word, came back and dropped all the cash in front of Tanner without so much as getting an envelope to hold it together. Janelle grumbled a bit but went and fetched him an elastic band from the storeroom anyway, as Tanner counted the bills with spit-slicked fingers.

“So we’re good?” To this day Tanner can still hear the pleading, almost whiny twang to Connor’s voice in his head. It was like he could be made whole only by Tanner’s mercy.

“Sure, yeah,” Tanner looked down at the money as he said the words of exoneration. To Janelle it probably looked like pure greed, but the truth was he just didn’t want to see that look of relief on Connor’s face again. That part, he still can’t put into words why.

After Connor left, Janelle poured him a shot of the best whisky on the shelves, said it’s on the house. Tanner had half a mind to pour some out on the floor for the dog, but that would have been a waste.

They didn’t stay at the bar all that long, there was still light out when Kendall said, “hey, can we get out of here? The music kind of sucks, and, I need something stronger than booze. If you can help me with that.”

They were much obliged, of course. Chang volunteered his house as the spot to host their esteemed guest, or in Chang’s words, the newest member of the wolf pack. Kendall rode with them; Tanner didn’t fully trust him to drive, besides they were going to make a pitstop at his and Mac’s place to pick up some extra stuff, and it was easier to have Kendall help himself to what he had in mind. When Kendall had gone around the corner to the ATM after paying down the tab, Tanner saw Janelle whispering in another regular’s ear and looking over at the tool table. He gave her the finger and she mouthed _fuck you_ back at him, but whatever, he wasn’t the one stuck doing a dead-end job, not today.

Tanner led the dog to the parking lot, the thick wad of cash tucked away in his jacket. Nobody believed him, after, when he tried to give his version of the story that had spread like wildfire to any and every person ever to step foot in Molly’s, but he was only thinking about the money when he looked for the handgun in his trunk. He had to stand his ground, and all that. The point was he was fucking scared, alone, and closer to wasted than was wise for him to be. There were dozens if not a hundred eyes on him when Connor dropped the money on him.

By then the dog had started wheezing between its whimpers. It was a horrible sound, and Tanner figured he should be thankful that the $3000 would be more than enough to cover the quantity and variety of drugs necessary to help him forget what the dog sounded like. He did, in fact, feel less jittery when he texted his dealer before walking out of the bar.

Standing there with his trunk popped open, Tanner looked around the parking lot. It was about 8pm, getting dark but the parking lot lights were still dark. Apart from the neon signage, Molly’s was the only part of the strip mall with bright spots, and the last place he’d wanted to look.

The skyline was brimming with colors of the twilight that he couldn’t name. He wanted to say something, a prayer of sorts, but he couldn’t come up with any of that either. The dog wasn’t whimpering as much anymore, and Tanner had never had a dog, but he knew enough to know that couldn’t be a good thing. Even the cash, heavy against his heart in the breast pocket, couldn’t make it a good thing. Not for him. He knew that now.

Tanner leaned into the trunk, grabbed the gun and some black garbage bags. He’d wanted to go home with someone tonight, or go with someone somewhere, but the only thing he could do was to ensure he got home alone with the same amount of money he had on him before the trigger was pulled.

“They should make a new type of joke about your family,” Tanner said. “ _A Roy walks into a bar_ , and…” He gestured in Kendall’s general direction on the couch in lieu of a joke. It made Kendall laugh, regardless.

The Chinese food was just delivered along with the coke, weed and oxys. The only thing they’d had enough of was meth, and Tanner couldn’t keep track of how much was left. At any rate, Kendall’s stack of cash was still tucked safely under the couch cushions.

“I think that type of jokes exists already,” Mac replied.

“No, but like,” Tanner pulled himself up from his slouch, just enough to show he was serious about making a point. “They’re the ones always fucking, like, above the rules, right? They’ll pay someone to get above the joke rules.”

“Uh-huh,” Kendall nodded, wiped traces of coke from the fuzz above his upper lip and sucked his finger clean. His fingernails were really clean and trimmed neatly, immaculate, if Tanner dared to use a fancy word for it. He didn’t want to stare, but his eyes often found a way to wander towards Kendall’s fingers as they were busied with various paraphernalia.

It was like this that their eyes met, looking at each other as if through hundreds of layers of fog, trying to focus but couldn’t. Chang and Mac were in the kitchen, divvying up the wontons and spring rolls and making too much noise about it because neither of them could count for shit. But it was easy for Tanner to tune them out, he could barely feel his face on this clean of a high. If he could feel anything, he might have expressed some discontent about the unfairness of even illicit drugs that rich folks got to use, but in a way that would get Kendall to laugh along. They were still sitting on loads of money, literally, like the goose that laid golden eggs.

“I think I may have broken your bong,” Kendall slowly raised his left hand, nudging closer to Tanner to show him a gash in his palm, and through narrowed eyes Tanner could make out the blood seeping out. And he did see a lot of red. Tanner must have missed the sound of glass breaking, drowned out by the sounds from the TV, from the kitchen, from the blissful white noise in what’s left of his thoughts.

“Shit, uh, I’ll get you a band-aid,” Tanner managed to get on his feet without tripping over anything on the floor. He offered a hand to Kendall, who allowed himself to be pulled up.

“Bathroom’s that way,” Tanner mumbled under his breath. He’d dropped Kendall’s hand, the good hand, like an overcooked Hot Pocket, that earlier suspicion of a fever in Kendall occurring to him again. The fingers that wrapped around the back of his hand gave off too much heat, and the feeling still clung to his hand like the smell of weed he couldn’t get out of his hoodies.

Tanner turned the corner into the dark hallway, with Kendall following behind him. And Kendall stood close enough that Tanner could feel his breath down his neck, which was fucking bullshit because all the drugs in his system should have kept him too high to feel anything. Tanner hoped the feeling would go away if he flicked the light switch on, so he did just that. And nothing changed.

Tanner turned around, fully annoyed. He leaned a bit to see past Kendall’s shoulder, in the direction of the kitchen: “Chang, did you—”

He was interrupted by a too-warm thing covering his lips. It had felt sudden in the moment, but in hindsight, it probably wasn’t, neither of them could have been sober enough for that kind of sudden movement, but Kendall had the upper hand of surprise. Tanner could barely make a noise when Kendall put his arms around him and sent them both tumbling sideways through the bathroom door.

Animal Control didn’t come to clean everything up until the morning after, so everyone leaving the bar that night saw exactly what was left on the ground, under the bright fluorescent lights of the parking lot. Apparently, some Boomers took photos and took it upon themselves to post on local Facebook groups to complain in very long text posts, and one of them called 911 claiming there was a psychopath loose in their neighborhood and serial murders would start happening very soon.

“Was that, like, objectively horrible?” Tanner asked. He was out with Mac in a quietish scenic spot, sitting in the car with windows down, the empty containers of burgers, shakes and fries strewn all over the place between them. It was the first time he’d gone outside and had a full meal in the three days since he took away Connor Roy’s dog and guilt. Mac had had enough of his sulky shit, told him he’d sucked the fun out of being high and that was a very selfish thing to do, before dragging him out of the house.

Mac just shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. Maybe you’ll know better the next time, like, if he gets another dog that gets cancer or something.”

“All right, well,” Tanner turned to look towards the sunset. A hot, stale breeze wafted through the car, picking up some fast food smells with it. He wanted to sit still but couldn’t stop his fingers from picking at each other. “If it happens next time, I’ll call you. Deal?”

“Fuck yeah, man,” Mac flashed the biggest grin at him and gave him a fist bump. Tanner felt better after their knuckles touched; but he also kind of hated himself for how much better it made him feel, so he lit another joint.

Tanner managed to turn on the light in the bathroom after they’d stumbled in. He’d turned the tides on Kendall in a quick moment, pinned him against the door with his right arm, and Kendall had gone still; people tended to underestimate his strength because of his skinniness.

Under the harsh white fluorescent light, he got a better look at the wound on Kendall’s hand. He dropped the arm pinned against Kendall’s chest, and grabbed the hand carefully. Kendall let him bring it up closer, into the space between their chests. It wasn’t that deep, thank fuck. It just looked bad because of the passage of time and the force of gravity that got the blood flowing everywhere in a messy pattern, and because Kendall had never done a day of hard work in his life, his palm all moisturized pristine porcelain skin without a trace of callus whatsoever. 

Without another word, Tanner turned to open the medicine cabinet, scanning each shelf for band-aids. It wasn’t that hard to find; the bright yellow SpongeBob packaging was fucking unmissable, and he’d needed the visual aid. He shook the box, breathing a small sigh of relief when the last piece fell out from the bottom. Kendall kept his hand where Tanner had left it, mid-air and palm facing up.

Tanner sighed again, heavier, and turned on the faucet. The sound of running water seemed to have shaken Kendall out of his daze a bit. Tanner stepped back towards the bathtub so there was enough space for Kendall to rinse the blood off his hand.

“Okay,” he grabbed Kendall’s hand again when it seemed clean enough, peeled the wax paper strips away with his teeth and, with both hands, lined up the band-aid against the wound. Kendall drew a sharp breath, like an overexaggerated hiss, when Tanner pressed down hard enough to stick it on firmly.

“Good?” he asked. Kendall nodded, eyes half-closed, the shadow of his eyelashes cast just so under his eyes. The corners of his mouth pulled up slightly, his smile lines deepened just so, but Tanner could feel it wasn’t so simple as a smile. He felt seen, and too much so; it pretty much stopped him feeling anything else.

“Your family not missing you?”

“Well, I actually filed a lawsuit against them and, uh, my dad planted a fake story about me in the news. I really wasn’t, using,” Kendall waved his hand to emphasize the negative, but stopped himself and chuckled. “I wasn’t, you know. Before.”

“Yeah,” that part wasn’t hard to see, it would be rude to say out loud but Tanner didn’t expect any different from a family that produced Connor and then Kendall. “I mean, we all have that, right? A before.”

Kendall leaned on the door, gone still and slumped like he couldn’t quite stand upright. With the only exit blocked in the smallest room of a small house, he could feel the heat properly now, from Kendall’s body. Not knowing what else to do, he wiped his lips with the back of his hand, palm facing out. Maybe it was paranoia as the onset of a bad trip, or maybe Tanner was actually getting scared of what remembering the feeling of Kendall’s lips on his would do to him, when he’d lie in the darkness alone by the end of this night, as an eventuality.

Kendall reached up, their palms touching as he moved the hand away from Tanner’s mouth and guided it towards the crotch of his jeans. The flush in Kendall’s cheeks was unmistakable, now, as he began to grind himself against the heel of Tanner’s hand, pushing his face forward to put his mouth on the pulse in Tanner’s neck. It’d reach him at long last, that feverish feeling Tanner had sensed from Kendall since the first time he said that name today, _Roy_ —he could feel it taking over him, the heat rising from his hand to his chest to his neck. It felt as real as anything.

Tanner still thought about the dog, from time to time, on days that bills came due or his family called or both, particularly when it was both. Connor hadn’t told him what her name was, and he didn’t bother asking—both deliberate, and on Tanner’s theory, that had been the real beginning of that. Because that was the thing that dog people would know, the first thing other dog people would ask was the dog’s name. Connor Roy had sniffed him out, he could do to Tanner what he couldn’t do to people who would truly feel bad for a dying dog.

Chang didn’t speak to him for a solid month after he heard the talk around town, that was how much he loved wolves and by extension dogs. And Tanner didn’t know how to fix it, he just couldn’t stop thinking about the unfairness of it all. Connor Roy might have already forgotten his dog’s name, and he’d certainly have forgotten the face of the man who he paid to help get rid of her. Tanner had nothing to remember her by, except the shame, which was enough to keep him from forgetting.

Kendall got on his knees soon enough, in those very expensive jeans he’d unbuttoned and unzipped, taking Tanner’s cock into his mouth as he touched himself. He was methodical with it, undoing the clasp of his watch and set it on top of the toilet tank before getting down to undo Tanner’s jeans. Tanner was the one held still against the wall now, Kendall steadied the grip on his narrow hip with his other hand, and all Tanner could think about was the thinness of the walls, what Chang and Mac must be doing. Hopefully more drugs to keep them from fully registering the length of his and Kendall’s absence, he tried very hard to communicate that point telepathically to all the gods he didn’t believe in.

The suction and the sloppy warmth felt good enough to keep Tanner from asking any questions. He couldn’t remember getting his dick sucked like this before, like he was the one being serviced but also made the whore for it. Kendall kept the band-aided hand on him, clutching the fabric of his jeans, it was the hand Tanner had wrapped his hand around, and it should feel too wrong to be intimate, but it was intimate still. Kendall’s other hand switched between touching himself and working the slobber of spit all over Tanner’s shaft. The only thing Tanner could say for sure was that Kendall definitely had a bit of practice with this, and he figured he was not in the position to complain about that. It was obvious that he didn’t suck cock for a living, though; he tried really hard, and couldn’t quite, get Tanner all the way to the back of his throat without gagging immediately. Tanner reached a hand, he wanted to pet Kendall’s sweat-shiny hair as a way of saying he didn’t mind, and it was okay. But he didn’t, couldn’t decide if that would be too much, so he balled his hands into fists, and focused very hard on keeping them still by his sides.

Kendall stood up, jeans and underwear dropped and pooled around his ankles. “Do you want to fuck me?” He asked Tanner through a kiss and another tug on his cock, with a thumb brushing over the slit. To Tanner’s own surprise he was hard enough to be leaking, which must have been to Kendall’s satisfaction.

Tanner just closed his eyes, leaned into the kiss deeper so he could swallow and quiet a guttural moan. He didn’t answer, either way, didn’t think he would be allowed to, with Kendall already sifting through the still open cabinet for lube and condoms, and finding them in what didn’t feel like a long time. It was still nice, though, that a man like that even thought to ask. He watched as Kendall bent over the sink, reached behind himself with two slicked fingers. He didn’t need to be told to reach forward and plant his hands firm on Kendall’s ass, keep Kendall spread apart so he could work himself open with a hasty desperation. He didn’t seem all that good with it, not unlike when he blew Tanner earlier; it didn’t have to be good if it did enough to do the job. But maybe that was the Type A thing Kendall talked about on the couch earlier, you couldn’t be that type if you just wanted to do the job.

“Fuck me,” Kendall commanded hoarsely, then grabbed at Tanner blindly in all the wrong directions like he was almost flailing. They’d made a mess between Kendall’s thighs, too much lube leaking down and wet streaks from both their leaking cocks. After getting the condom on with some effort, Tanner’s hand started to shake a little as he tried to line himself up to the opening, all too willing and eager. Before he could push the head inside, Kendall rocked his hips against him and took him in.

“Fuck,” the sensation was enough to break Tanner’s hard-kept silence, the tight heat around him already too much just staying still like this. He braced his hands on the edge of the countertop, and with his chest fully pressed against Kendall’s back, he pushed into him until he could go no further. Everything from that point on was quickened as if someone pressed the fast-forward button on them somewhere, the ins and outs of their breathing, the rhythms of their heartbeats, the sweat that dampened their brows and soaked through their shirts.

“Hold still,” Tanner said through gritted teeth, his hands moving to keep Kendall in place. Then he closed his eyes and started fucking Kendall as hard as he could.

“I wouldn’t have poured you that good whiskey if I knew that was what you were gonna do with it,” Janelle told him, when he and Chang had mended fences with a little bit of Mac’s massaging and the three of them could go back to Molly’s all together again.

“Fine,” Tanner just rolled his eyes. He’d managed to convince himself that it had been too long to get into it with anyone over the dog stuff again. “I don’t deserve the good shit, alright, but it’s not like I fucking asked for it. You were there. You saw. I didn’t ask for any of it.”

Kendall’s brother was right, their people did drop by, with some papers for all three of them to sign, but Tanner’s stack was visibly thicker than the other two. No explanations were offered, no questions asked. They all printed and signed their names next to the x’s without so much as skimming through the non-disclosure agreements and waivers, but this time Tanner managed to keep his eyes away from the money; he looked at Chang and Mac, who couldn’t stop looking at the stack of white envelopes.

“Have a great rest of your day, gentlemen,” their people checked over everything one more time before they left the way they came. Once the door shut behind them, Tanner put his feet up on the coffee table again.

He looked to his left, the empty spot where Kendall sat that day, where he’d slipped back after they came out of the bathroom as if he’d never left. The chipped and scratched floorboards where the shards of broken glass were scattered all over, Tanner cleaned them up with paper towels while Kendall was on the phone with his brother. The cash under the cushions that Kendall left behind without so much as saying a word. The stupid Microsoft updates thing Tanner had hollered at Kendall in place of a proper goodbye, the silence he received in turn. The splatter stains of come and lube left on Tanner’s jeans that seemed to be stuck there even after he’d put them in the wash a few times. No one else ever noticed or said anything when he wore them, after, so either his eyes were fucked forever, or it was a permanent trick of the light.

Tanner reached for his lighter. But he’d changed his mind before he grabbed the joint. “I gotta go,” he put his feet down on the floor, stood up and walked towards the door.

“Hey,” Chang waved the envelope at him. “You gotta take this. This is, like, the first time we made money together, like a proper business.”

Tanner turned around and shrugged. “Nah, I’m good. You split it with Mac.” Then he walked down the driveway to his car.

Everything slowed down, grew lucid and calm in his mind’s eye, after Tanner came inside Kendall. He could make out most of the details in that moment, the marks of his thumb where it’d dug into Kendall’s hip, the mirror door of the cabinet Kendall had swung out all the way so as not to look at themselves, their overlapping hands splayed with fingers almost intertwined, fingernails long and dirty and trimmed and clean, bracing against the countertop together. The dangerously thin roll of toilet paper they’d shared, wiping each other down in harder to reach places, putting the stuff where they belonged, the clothes, the lube, the condom. It all felt real, as real as everything that happened in Tanner’s life that led him there, in that moment, with Kendall looking into his eyes, putting a hand on Tanner’s cheek. He could feel the rough edges of that stupid SpongeBob band-aid as it scraped against his skin. Tanner wanted to raise his hand, trace a finger over where Kendall put his fingers on his face. He didn’t. Neither of them tried to lean in for another kiss.

“It was real,” Tanner said out loud, before Kendall pulled his hand away to open the bathroom door.

“What?”

“It was real. Like it was a thing that happened, for the people who were there, to remember. After,” Tanner hoped the words came out the way they made sense in his head.

Kendall paused, milling it over in his head. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it was.”

“Okay,” Tanner nodded. He’d felt secure more so in knowledge than in drugs or money for the first time in his life, and he’d found it to be a pretty okay feeling—solid like buttered toast for breakfast.

“Let’s go,” Kendall opened the door, walked out first. Tanner turned around. He reached to grab the watch atop the toilet tank, shoved it in his hoodie’s pocket before turning off the light. And then he stepped into the darkness behind Kendall.

**Author's Note:**

> I played [Trouble](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcDYTcTXtI8) by Cage the Elephant on repeat when I read back my first draft to put in finishing touches and bits of editing. Would recommend listening as an outro to play Tanner off the stage if you are interested.


End file.
